"You take the good with the bad..."

Good News : I have a new iPod. It's a shiny black 80 gig magic machine that will bring me hours and hours of joy and happiness.

Bad News: We'll just see if spending that $250 after holding out for months since my first iPod died is going to be worth it in these difficult economic times. I paid $4.09 a gallon for gas this morning and I have over a 50 mile commute to work each day round trip.

Good News : I've got a quarter of my vampire-centric horror screenplay Life Blood finished, including 20+ pages in the last week alone.

Bad News : I've only been able to work on it during my downtime at work, which isn't often enough, due to an idiosyncratic writing method I am cursed with that restricts me from working on a particular writing project on more than source at a time. So I can only write while here at work. When I'm at home or elsewhere I have to work on other things that I have already previously started there. I know it sounds very ridiculous but I am only getting more and more ritualistic as I age. I should probably just start going to some OCD support group now.

Good News : I've been getting a lot of good sleep lately.

Bad News : I've been getting a lot of sleep lately due to a mixture of vicodin and rozerem that leaves me pretty groggy and drowsy the next morning and hasn't helped curve my afternoon napping on the weekends either. I think if I cut back on the meds by fifty-percent it will make a sizable difference.

Good News : Shudder To Think, a really cool indie band from the 90s are reuniting for a brief tour this fall. Far lesser known than other recent reunited bands from the same period such as The Pixies, Dinosaur Jr., Stone Temple Pilots, etc. but very cool none the less. I highly recommend their album Funeral at the Movies and even their lone major label release, Pony Express Record, is really fantastic as well.

Bad News : The closest they are coming to Austin is the Voodoo Music Festival in New Orleans, which I probably won't be able to make.

Good News : I saw an old friend today that I haven't seen in nearly a year.

Bad News : That old "friend" is actually a former co-worker who I briefly dated and she had actually been back in town for a while but has been successfully avoiding me and the awkwardness surrounding our romantic dissolution slash transition back into friendship. I have to admit she looked good too. Damn. I'm still over it though.

Well that's the facts of life, folks.